a recollection of stories - work in progress
Musicians are invited to contribute anecdotes by writing to peterx@blubop.com . We will post them and acknowledge the author.
REQUESTS
- A drunk old man once walked up on stage next to me while I was singing and asked me if I knew a particular song (I forget the name). I tried to ignore him but he kept asking so while I was signing "Lay Lady, Lay, I turned to him quickly and nodded "no" and resumed signing. At this point he started singing it directly in my ear to see if I would recognize it. He finally walked off stage once he understood that I couldn't help him.
- A barman used to impose himself on the band when he was with women he wanted to impress. He would pull out a saxophone and play two songs, one of which was "Tequila" and just play the two-note hook at the end over and over, but act like "Johnny Las Vegas" while he was doing it. The amusing thing was not only his poor playing but the fact that the black shirt he was wearing tucked in to his almost transparent white fortrel pants was open halfway down his chest to show off his cheesy bling, and that he had hand-painted his black platform shoes white to match his pants and big white belt. One Saturday afternoon, after we had hosted a particularly brutal amateur contest, he came up and wanted to play. I knew this would happen, since I had seen him sitting with a couple of women, (he never asked to play when he was with his wife) and had told some of my friends in attendance to keep an eye (and ear) open to what was going to happen when he was going to take the stage. As usual he pulled out his horn and counted the band in. The tune was in the key of "D" so I played all of the chord pattern in standard open D-A-G positions but one fret off - so the guitar accompaniment sounded pretty bad. We were a trio so it was pretty obvious. The other two band members would glance at me from time to time wondering what I was doing and the drummer, catching on, started dropping beats every now and then. We limped through that tune and he (the barman) shone through it all. When the first song was done, he took the applause, and still smiling, turned to me and asked: "wasn't there something funny about the last tune?" I answered: "bah! not warmed up I guess, do the other one and it will probably be better." So The drummer and I picked up where we left off and after a while, the bass player finally caught on and decided, in a not too subtle way, to play badly also, only he did it awful, loud, off-beat and in the wrong key. By this time my friends in the audience were crying and our illustrious sax player noticed, caught on and left in a huff, never to return to the stage again - at least as long as I was there.
- In the same bar, same band, during another amateur contest, a female contestant came up to sign. She was dressed in black satin from head to toe, black hair, finger nails painted black, told us what song she was going to sing but didn't know the key. I got her to sing to me briefly without the mike while I fished for the key, found it, counted the tune in and started - a waltz that everybody knows in Quebec. She immediately started signing in another key, which I quickly caught up to and we changed quickly to pursue without too much damage and then she kept changing keys again and again. With each verse and chorus, and sometimes in mid-sentence she would move to another key and never followed the 3/4 beat. After a while, the drummer was so lost that he just kept a straight beat with his kick drum, or at least that's what I though until I saw his face cramped in a twisted smile, with tears running down his face and both arms dangling. He told me afterwards he was laughing so hard he couldn't hold his arms up and his face hurt. It was a good thing that he was sort of hidden behind his drums because the girl's relatives were sitting in the front row, all of them crying, entranced by her performance. I learned afterwards that she was terminally ill and that her dream was to sing. Her family bought her what they thought was a fine stage outfit and took her from stage to stage, to try to fulfil her dream.
- In one band, the drummer would do a really good solo in our version of Santanna's "Evil Ways". Once, while he was doing this, his head was slightly turned to the left, he didn't see a drunk slowy making his way to the stage from the right. I was on the right side, sitting/leaning against my amp, hoping that he would gesture me for whatever he wanted, but before I knew it he stepped up onto the stage and, heading towards the drummer, tripped on a mike cord and sending a ride cymbal crashing to the floor, landed onto the floor tom, on his back. Total silence immediatley ensued as he found himself nose to nose with the drummer who, although astonished, calmly asked him: What are you doing here? To which the drunk answered: Can you play Wipeout?
COMMENTS
- "You boys are very good, but could you play something nice?"
- "Can you do the jumps like David Lee Roth?"
- We were told we were too loud after saying "one- two" in the mike while we were setting up...
- Before we took the stage in a Catholic School auditorium, the brother responsible for discipline took the mike and warned all the students that they were allowed to enjoy the entertainment but yelling and whistling would not be tolerated
ACCOMODATIONS
- We were directed to a room/storage area to change into our playing duds. This room had a trap door going down to the beer cellar and home to the biggest and meanest german sheppard I have ever seen. This dog literally wanted to eat us. He would jump so hard against the trap door that one of us had to stand on it and hold on while the others changed.
- I remember reading graffiti on the ceiling in this one place, laying in bed, bored, in a town where whatever was there, was closed. Could have read the walls but the bed sunk so low that I couldn't see over the sides without pulling myself up.
- Ever been to a northern town during hunting season? Most men are out hunting, and several of their wives stay at home and do quite a bit of hunting of their own. Trouble in the boonies...
- One restaurant was short of certain condiments. We were simply told that they didn't have any and to hurry up as she (the waitress) had other things to do.
BAR MANAGERS
- One bar manager/owner asked me if it was possible to turn the volume down. I replied that I couldn't. I told him that the amps were an "on and off" circuit and that they played only at one level of volume. He returned at the next set telling me accusingly that he had "been informed" that these things could, in fact, be turned down. They finally fired us because we couldn't play line-dance music.
- During the psychedelic era, one manager asked us not to play any "snake music".
- We were fired from a month-long bar gig (on the first night) because I wouldn't lend the hat I was wearing to an amateur contest participant.
- Knew there was going to be trouble when we walked into the lobby and the manager was standing (barely) there drunk and in his pajamas. Needless to say we didn't get full pay even though we played a full night to good reviews.
- In the seventies, one dance hall on the outskirts of a mining town had no liquor licence but patrons would bring booze in their cars and drink in the parking lot. the place was pretty rough. The booking agent that had sent us there had previously booked two hard rock bands and the place was essentially a hard-core country crowd. We were told the previous band had been thrown out into the parking lot along with their gear. (This is way before the Blues Brothers movies). Although we were not a hard rock band we did play covers of the Doors' Soft Parade and the Beatles' Abbey Road suites, which we had put a lot of work in and - we thought - sounded good. This totally bombed. During the second intermission, the manager of the place told us in no uncertain terms that he was not pleased at the fact that we only played two songs and they lasted a half-hour each. He then walked onto the stage, took the mike and started to rant to the crowd that we were another bunch of drugged-up hippes from the city who came down there to laugh at them and that they should show them how they deal with that kind of insult - and on and on until he had worked them up into a frenzy. After that he told us we were welcome to use the payphone at the back to call our booker if we could make it accross the room. It was surreal. We started taking mike stands apart so that we would have something to defend ourselves with as things were starting to look very hostile. I was playing bass at the time but remembered that I knew part of a mixer dance (Paul Jones) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki